


Distorted Reflections

by diamondforger



Category: The World's End (2013)
Genre: Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24266557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diamondforger/pseuds/diamondforger
Summary: Gary finds his old friends in Newton Haven after the lights go out.  They're different than he remembers, but that's not a bad thing.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Distorted Reflections

The Blanks looked exactly like the humans they were meant to replace, physically at least. It was uncanny seeing the boys exactly as they'd looked decades earlier. Especially uncanny because of how differently they acted. 

Gary didn't know exactly what he'd expected when he'd returned to Newton Haven. He'd heard the Blanks had woken up and he just knew he needed to see them. Maybe it was closure he'd been seeking, but that wasn't what he got. 

The four of them had all been together. They didn't talk, didn't even respond as he approached. That was odd. The other Blanks hadn't talked either, but they'd stared. All of them stared, silently watching his every move as he wandered trough the burnt out town. 

"The King has returned," he said, arms spread as he walked up to likenesses of his friends. 

They looked up at that. There wasn't any real emotion in their eyes, but they nodded. And when he asked, they followed him.

They traveled for a full day with only Gary's voice to break the silence. He talked the whole time, explaining what he had been happening since the lights went out, and they listened in silence. The first time any of them responded was when Gary stopped to refill his water at a creek. 

"Do you need this?" Gary said, offering the flask. 

"We don't require it," Ollie took the water, gulping down most of it. 

"But it cools us down," Pete said, as Ollie handed it off. 

"And helps us clean out our internal systems," Steve knelt on the bank, scooping up some water. He splashed it on his face, wiping blue blood off his cheeks. At least Gary had taken to calling it blood. It seemed to function similar enough, and he didn't care to hear the science behind it. 

"If we can't find cold water, we'll need to shut down long enough for our systems to cool and reboot." Andy said as he looked at Gary with a completely blank expression, "Drinking is preferable, but not necessary."

"Good to know." Gary looked between the four of them. "Are you still... connected?"

"No," Andy said, "why do you ask?" 

"Because you're all talking the same."

"That's because the answer to that question is the same no matter which one of us you ask," Ollie said with an exasperated sigh, "Ask us personal questions and you'll get different answers."

"Noted." 

It took days, but Gary found the questions they were looking for. Each one of them had a fraction of their originals memories. Which was fine. Decades of drowning his problems in alcohol had left Gary's memories damaged and inconsistent as well. 

He quickly learned that the effects of the selectiveness went a lot deeper than he'd first thought. No matter how similar they looked to his friends, they were all very much different. 

Ollie didn't have the real Oliver's anger. He was just as sharp, just as clever, but he didn't swear or grumble nearly as much. He was oddly warm and particularly charismatic when they met with humans willing to engage with Blanks. It was hardly surprising, Oliver had always been a good salesman. 

Gary was a leader, but Ollie was a diplomat. Before the Network went down, Gary might have been jealous, angry even that Ollie would be so presumptions as to take over conversations. In this new world however, Gary'd learned to let go. It was nice to sit back and watch the kid wrap people around his finger like it was nothing. 

Pete had confidence that human Peter never had. He'd selected to forget all of the bullying he'd gone through. Without the fear and insecurity weighing him down, he was much bigger and brighter. He was still the softest of the boys, but he no longer cowered behind the rest whenever something went wrong. 

The first time someone got hurt, he was the one directing them. Gary broke down the second he saw Andy on the ground blue leaking everywhere, but Pete was already moving to stop the leak and directing the other to help push his arm back in before he lost anymore blood. That night Pete stayed by Gary's side telling him all of the ways they could fix their blank bodies if anything went wrong. The lecture was as comforting as it was boring, but that seemed to be on purpose. Gary fell asleep before Pete even got to explaining the best way to protect their fragile heads. 

Steve was a musician. That wasn't surprising, Steven had always been a musician. But it'd always been a hobby, never a career. Music was fun in high school but as soon as he'd graduated he'd put down the bass and thrown himself into a "real" career. 

What was considered a "real" career was very different in this strange future. The second they found a guitar in decent condition, Steve started to play again. It was rough at first. Almost... robotic. Gary knew better than to use that word, but it was an apt description. Steve kept at it though and soon he was writing new beautiful songs. People gladly traded valuable goods just to hear clumsy covers of songs from the before times and Gary grew used to falling asleep to his nightly practice. 

Andy was the one that'd changed the least. Andrew always had a pretty good idea of who he was, there weren't many memories he'd chosen to forget. He didn't have the years of anger and resentment at Gary's antics, but he seemed to understand without being told the full story. 

It was the lack of change that made interacting with him so strange. Gary knew he was a perfect copy of Andy at eighteen, but he didn't look like Gary remembered him. 

Gary would never have admitted it, but in high school he'd thought Andrew was the most beautiful man he'd ever met. But this Andy... wasn't that. Maybe Gary was just too old. He couldn't look at Andy without seeing an awkward teen, cute but hardly breathtaking like he remembered. The Blank wasn't even half as good a fighter as his human counterpart, not with his flimsy, breakable body. 

He was still a good right hand man. Still kind, still brave. Just... not the Andy Gary had missed all those years. 

Some days Gary wished he could have the original boys back. He wished he hadn't messed up his chance with Andrew, wished he hadn't kept messing it up. It was too late for that. He couldn't change the past, but he could ensure the Blanks with his friends' faces were taken care of in the way he didn't care for the originals. 

They followed him through his journey, not because he forced them too, but because he proved himself a leader worth following. The world may have ended, but he'd found a family in the ashes. It was exactly like the family he'd always wanted, except completely different. And that was fine by him. 


End file.
